<p>So I feel REALLY underworked in my current school curricula (freshman here), so I went about self-studying 4 APs (Euro, Worl, Psych, MicroEcon) in addition AP Macroeconomics (which I coerced the school administration to give me second semester).
I plan on self-studying a lot more in the future to make up for the sub-par school curricula. The Common App only has a few slots to show how many APs you’ve taken. So how do you actually show how many APs you’ve taken? (I’m going to have 20+ APs by when I graduate, so the awards are pointless to show how many APs I’ve taken).</p>
<p>Send your college board AP scores as you would your sats. Also I believe there is a place in awards where you can say you got whatever AP Scholar award you get, and you can say ‘Scholar with Distinction, 3.5+ average over 20 APs’ or whatever.</p>
<p>That is what my sons did (not 20, however).</p>
<p>So you can send AP scores prior to admission? Would such an act be frowned upon (compared to, say, self-reporting)?</p>
<p>I don’t think colleges want AP score reports sent for your application, and that is going to cost money to send scores everywhere. Just list them on the common app. I think there is space for 10. Are you really going to have taken 20 AP tests by the end of junior year? Remember, you won’t have senior scores to list. Well if that is the case, just list the scores you can’t fit in the AP section in the additional comments section.</p>
<p>Also, you should keep in mind that these tests cost $89 each and those costs do start to add up. There isn’t much point to taking tests which won’t get you any credit, and there’s probably only so many credits you can actually make use of. Your parents may have a better use for that $1000 than simply trying to rack up the most possible AP credits-that-will-never-be-used. For instance, my daughter says that most schools aren’t going to give credit for both English AP exams. Check policies on colleges you may be interested in.</p>
<p>Our district/state subsidizes the tests to make them relatively cheap (~$30).
APs are my way of challenging myself academically, as our school lacks a strong academic program. As for actual usefulness of the credits, I know that a lot of them won’t be that helpful…</p>
<p>I think your effort is a bit misdirected. Colleges want to see you pursuing your interests in your spare time, not sitting around reading AP prep books.</p>
<p>At the moment, there’s nothing really academically interesting I can do between, say, 9-10 p.m. Nor is there anything I can do in class while the teacher “reviews” the same concepts for over a week straight.
It’s not that I don’t do things outside of school. I typically have a lot of things going on (and their fun too!), so it’s not like I’m dedicating myself to just self-studying a whole bunch of pointless APs. Plus, most of the subjects that I’m self-studying are either history or science, which are my favorite subjects.
Also, I’m not prioritizing APs over any other thing I do. If I weren’t self-studying APs, I would probably be playing video games or engaging in some other frivolous pursuit…</p>
<p>AP Psych and AP micro are not science.</p>
<p>“Nothing academically interesting” you could do? Really? What about reading an actual real book on the subjects that interest you rather than a cram book on “AP’s known to be easy to self-study”?</p>
<p>It’s not like I don’t do that either; I have a stack of astronomy books that I have sitting on my desk that I read for fun in my spare time. I have another stack of mathematical puzzles that I work on for fun when I’m bored. I don’t honestly know why I’m taking so many APs. It’s probably because I have a lot of “achievement motivation” (term from Psych!). And it’s not like I’m just taking the APs for the sake of taking APs; so far all of the subjects I’ve studied have been genuinely interesting. Again, I’m not prioritizing studying for APs on top of anything else other than playing video games or some other pointless endeavor. </p>